Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com, and it's guest time on the show, and I am very pleased to have with me Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks.

Karen: That's me.

Russ: Karen-

Karen: Hi.

Russ: Welcome to The BusinessMakers Show.

Karen: Oh, lovely to be here. Thank you.

Russ: I'm certain that quite a few in our audience have heard of Chookooloonks, but for those that have not, tell us about it.

Karen: Sure. I started Chookooloonks almost 5 years ago, and at the time I started it because my husband and I were waiting for our daughter to be born and I'm from Trinidad and my husband is English, and so all of our family were all over the world, so it really started as sort of a personal blog with that. Chookooloonks actually is a Trini word that means sweetheart and it's used usually for children, and so I just kind of started there and it sort of has evolved. Photography has always been a really big hobby of mine, and so I started using it as a platform to show off some of my work. At the time, I was a lawyer and I was a practicing lawyer for a large energy company and just recently quit my law job and quit my law career and now I'm writing and shooting full time.

Russ: Cool. But in the beginning Chookooloonks was for friends and family? Is that right?

Karen: Yeah-you know-I mean, I was so dumb, really, with the whole blogging thing. I just kind of was like, well, I saw this woman's site, a woman whose name is Megan Morrone, and she had a blog called Jumping Monkeys. She's actually been on TechTV and stuff. And I found her site first-

Russ: Okay.

Karen: -and thought, 'That's really cool. It's kind of like a diary and that's a way I can keep my family involved,' and I just made it public because I thought that would be the only way they could see it. Like, I didn't really understand that there was password protecting and you could send passwords out. I was like, "Well, how else are they going to see it if it's not public?"

Russ: Right.

Karen: And it sort of got its own legs and I got a huge following. I was very lucky I got quite a huge following, and then I moved back to Trinidad for a couple of years and that sort of made my pictures look really beautiful because I was in a lovely tropical setting, and it just sort of grew from there.

Russ: Was there sort of an epiphany along the way, like maybe, "Wow, there's all sorts of people that are interested in what I'm writing about." Or did it just happen gradually over a long period of time?

Karen: Well, originally when I started it-my husband and I, we adopted our daughter and the adoption community tends to be very voracious when it comes to looking for information on the web.

Russ: Okay.

Karen: And so that was really how I think it originally grew. It was like everybody was really sort of into that. I don't write about adoption. It's an event that happened in the past and is certainly part of my daughter's life, but it's not an ongoing thing, so once I realized that-you know-people were sort of Googling-you know-adoptive families and that sort of thing and that's really kind of how it got as big as it did.

Russ: And early on you were posting photographs that you took just to share and-

Karen: Just to share, exactly.

Russ: -those became very popular as well.

Karen: They did and then I started really focusing on photography, and so now-you know-when I look back at the photographs originally, I'm like, "Ugh, God. What was I thinking?" But yeah, it definitely helped a lot with my photography as well because I have an audience that looks for a photo a day, so I tend to keep that up.

Russ: Cool. Apparently at some point down the line, you realized that you could probably sell some advertising on your blog.

Karen: Yeah, I did. You know, I don't advertise now but I did for a while, and when I was in Trinidad I did, and it was rather bold of me when I think about it now.

Russ: Okay, okay.

Karen: And I'm not sure, how it sort of happened. I started advertising-I think it was Lisa Stone with BlogHer who contacted me and I-you know-BlogHer was just sort of picking up and she was saying, "You should be a part of our network," and I thought, 'Well, why not?' So, yeah, so I did for a while.

Russ: So why did you change that?

Karen: I actually stopped because my blog really kind of switched over to more visual than it was reading, and so it just didn't work with my design, right? Like, I didn't want anything to compete with the images. Every now and then I still toy with the idea of advertising again, but for right now-you know-I just want it to be nice and clean and just be all about my images, so for right now I don't advertise.

Russ: Okay, okay. So when you say today that you're writing and taking photography-I mean, do you do that professionally?

Karen: Yeah, so I blog various places. I do a weekly column on Gadling.com, which is a travel site, and I write about how to improve your vacation shots and your travel photography.

Russ: Cool.

Karen: I contribute to BlogHer as well, as a parenting blogger. I just recently had my first gallery opening here in town, so I'm doing lots of shows, so yeah, it's now sort of become my full time profession, and blogging has been the way that I've launched it.

Russ: Well, we really appreciate you sharing your time with us.

Karen: Oh, it's been great. Thank you very much for having me.

Russ: You bet. We've been talking with Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks, and you're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.